Good Java OOP book

[Animal]

I am going to be starting a Java OOP course and i am looking for a really good book which will take me fron being a complete novice to and advanced level in Java. Does anyone know of any really good books which fit this bill?

-animal-

[lightnin]

i usually pimp this one:

Java, Java, Java by Ralph Morelli.

ISBN 0-13-011332-8

It's a textbook, and a few years old but it's an excellent resource for learning java.

problem is, it was written before java had generics, but it's still good with OOP stuff.

[tmh88]

I have a java book that you can have for free if you pay the shipping. Its called java software solutions, for AP computer Science. Its written by lewis, loftus, and cocking. Its from 2004 so its pretty recent.

[airbornflght]

I'm taking AP Comp Sci, and all we are doing this year is Java, not sure how basic the book starts out as we already have a year of programming experience, but the book is called:


Fundamentals of Java second edition
Lambert - Osborne
ISBN: 0-619-05962-1

It says that it is comprehensive, so I guess it should cover all you need to know as just learning.

[lightnin]

Fundamentals of Java second edition
Lambert - Osborne
ISBN: 0-619-05962-1



that book was aggravating to me. they use their own packages for i/o and swing and then when you go to write your own stuff later you have no experience with sun's i/o or swing and you are sorta left in the dark....

[airbornflght]

what is swing, I saw the packages that I downloaded so that I could compile, one of them was breezy swing or something like that. Perhaps I have a lot to learn this year.

[lightnin]

Swing is sun's windowing api for java

http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/

it's included in j2se since it came out i think (1.2)

[airbornflght]

I see, okay.

[lightnin]

yeah i mean that book is fine as long as you realize that all the nifty quick console libraries and swing libraries included with the 'lamborne' packages probably aren't going to be available for your use later on....

it's like they tried to 'dumb down' some things to help show a more general overview of some concepts but some of those concepts were lost on me later when i had to actually code in the 'details'. sort of leaves you going 'hey how'd they do that'. of course ymmv.

[AznHisoka]

I highly recommend "Thinking in Java' by Bruce Eckel. You can find some free books of his on his site, methinks.

[airbornflght]

We just actually got new java books in our AP class, "Lewis & Loftus Java Software Solutions; Foundations of Program Design" and I like them much better, because it uses the new Java 5 SDK. and it also teaches you the inbuilt classes and packages instead of using their own like the last book.

Though, in the class she is only teaching us the console based stuff on it. We haven't done anything with a gui, and she says that we wont, because that isnt what they ap test deals with. I want to know what test now days deals with just console programs. when is the last time a major or even usefull program just had a console mode. excluding F@H, and various server apps/linux.

I mean, I like learning all of this stuff, but I've been reading ahead on my own, and Im more than halfway through the book and we are only halfway through the quarter.

My only question is this, is there a way to clear the screen? cls throws an error, and my teacher thinks that it is a method of a class or something, but the book hasnt made mention of it, and I didnt see while scanning the book.

[shwaip]

apache? Almost all server-based progams are not gui-driven.

tried System.out.flush(); ?

[airbornflght]

apache? Almost all server-based progams are not gui-driven.

tried System.out.flush(); ?

Im aware of that, almost al web service aps arent gui based. I was just saying the ap that the average user was more likely to see.

[shwaip]

Im aware of that, almost al web service aps arent gui based. I was just saying the ap that the average user was more likely to see.

That's because the average user can't deal without a gui. Usually (at least in the work I've done), what you want to do is abstract the gui from the program - lets you run stuff from the command line. Most of what I've done hasn't been targeted to the end-user though.

Not using a gui is also good practice if you're gonna go into embedded systems.

[airbornflght]

yeh, i like learning the command line and all of that, I just wish she would teach us some of the gui stuff. she wouldnt have to go real in depth, just some of the basic stuff. I may just go ahead and learn it on my own.